Pinch-hitter Chris Carter hit a walkoff homer off Steve Delabar as the A’s beat the Mariners 4-1 in 11 innings Friday.
The A’s knew that sending Carter up to hit for Brandon Moss would cause the Mariners to replace Oliver Perez with Delabar, but they preferred the righty-righty matchup and Carter made it pay off, delivering a three-run blast to left-center. He has three homers in just 12 at-bats since being called up on June 29. While the idea was to play him against lefties, they might want to give him some starts at DH against righties, even though that would weaken the outfield defense by putting Seth Smith in left and sending Coco Crisp to the bench.